Joe-D's Bad Resume

This is going to get a little bit lengthy. But it is, IMO, a great sports mystery. And I want to get to the bottom of it. If not for the board, then for myself.

2000-2001:
-Joe Dumars was named GM prior to the 2000-20001 season. Just one season removed from being a starter on the team!! And that's pretty insane/unique, isn't it? The roster he inherited--he actually played with 4/5 starters, and 4/8 reserves the previous season. ***So.. he knew the team he inherited very, very well; and from such a unique perspective. He also, obviously, knew the rest of the league at this time quite well, and again, from a very unique perspective.
-His first draft. Mateen Cleaves in the 1st rd. Brian Cardinal in the 2nd rd. I'm guessing the head man Joe-D had a lot more to do with that first pick (which sucked), and I'm guessing he let his assistant GM John Hammond and scouts have a lot more input on the second (which was good). ***From the start, Joe-D wasn't very good at scouting players he hadn't played with. But with later picks, where assistants had more input, he started off well.
-In his first major move, after failing to resign Grant Hill, he executed a great sign and trade with the Orlando Magic to acquire Ben Wallace and Chucky Atkins. ***He'd played against both and knew their games. ***Hammond was there to help him execute the deal.
-He then made a series of great salary-saving moves. ***Establishing that he was not going to be keeping "friends" around for the sake of keeping friends around; that he was a professional. And it's also important to note that Hammond was here to help him execute these deals, this plan. He shipped Lindsey Hunter (his best friend, as I understand it). Former teammates Lattener and Mills. Former teammate Vaught. Former teammates Montross and Williams (*in an important move that returned Corliss Williamson).
-The team did not make the playoffs.

2001-2002:
-Joe Dumars second draft. Rodney White. Mehmet Okur. Again, the pick Joe-D probably had more influence on was terrible. The pick John Hammond and co. probably had more influence on was great. Joe-D as a scout = bad. Not that he can't recognize talent. He obviously recognized it in guys he went up against. But perhaps to suggest that he didn't put in enough time in the film room, or in interviews.
-He hired Rick Carlisle. A great hire. But a brainy one? Rick was Chuck Daly's former assistant. And I'm sure he was suggested strongly. I'll give Chuck the credit on that find. ***Joe-D finding great coaches? The skill was never there. Chuck found him this one.
-Traded former teammate Jed Buecheler in an important deal that brought back Cliff Robinson--who Joe-D had of course played against. Traded some 2nd rd. picks in a good deal to land Zeljko Rebraca~~in a deal that smells of John Hammond. Was quick to abandon a bad draft pick (with Hammond and co. around) in shipping Mateen for a 3-pt. specialist he'd gone up against in John Barry.
-Team made it to the second rd of the playoffs.

2002-2003:
-Joe-D's third draft. Tayshaun Prince. A great pick. Not a lotto-pick. I presume this means Hammond might've had a little more input than in previous 1st rd. picks. But I will give Joe-D some credit on this one. It was an old-school pick. A 4-yr proven college star. Available late because of the league's growing obsession with young potential.
-Signed Chauncey Billups--who he'd gone up against, and who'd been compared to him--in a great signing. Made the great Stackhouse (who he'd played with) for Rip Hamilton (who he'd played against) deal. Again, with Hammond around, was quick to give up on a bad pick, moving Rodney White for a 1st rd'er. And, again, it should be noted that Hammond was here to help him execute these trades.
-Team made it to the ECF.

2003-2004:
-Joe-D winds up with another lotto pick. Darko Milicic. One of the worst picks ever. Carlos Delfino--who did have some nice seasons elsewhere, eventually--was picked in the late 1st. A pick I presume Hammond had more input on. Then a big Greek who never amounted to anything was drafted almost last.
-Joe-D fires Rick Carlisle (showing his first sign of impatience with coaches). He brings in first-ballot Hall of Famer Larry Brown. A move that paid off. But not a move that required a great deal of insight, as Brown was so widely respected and well regarded as being one of the best coaches of all time.
-Elden Campbell was signed in a smart deal, Hammond around. Cliff was traded for Bob Sura in a questionable deal. Curry was traded for Hunter in a whatever deal that ended up being beneficial. Then there was the BIG deal. The 3-team deal. We gave up Atkins, Hunter, Rebraca, Sura, 2 1st rd. picks. We got 'Sheed. Hammond was there.
-Team won the NBA championship.

2004-2005:
-About the last pick, Ricky Paulding. Whatever.
-Signed Dyess in a great move. Hammond still around. Though, Joe-D knew of Dyess from his playing days I'm sure. Traded Corliss for Derrick Coleman in a really dumb deal~~which stinks of Joe-D, as Coleman was so well regarded during their playing days. Traded for Arroyo--who had some decent run--in a move that smells of Hammond to me.
-Lost in the NBA finals. Always thought he could've done more to improve the team that season, in replacing Memo.

2005-2006:
-The Larry Brown fiasco. I thought Joe-D handled it poorly. I thought he was to blame. No Chuck around to tell him who to hire = bad hire in Flip Saunders.
-Ben Wallace leaves. It was a good decision to let him go for that contract, I guess. It was a bad idea to do NOTHING to help replace him.
-J-Max in the 1st rd. Probably a co-Joe-D/Hammond-venture (as Joe-D thought he'd be Ben-like). So-so pick, I guess. Amir in the 2nd, which was great, and I'm guessing Hammond-influenced. Acker almost dead last, whatever.
-Gave up on Darko, with Hammond around, netting a 1st rd. pick.
-Team lost in the ECF (Wade/Shaq). Joe-D really did nothing to strengthen a team that could've easily won a championship in this season, I always thought.

2006-2007:
-Drafted Will Blalock and Cheick Samb almost last. Whatever.
-Really did nothing to improve the team, again. Nazr, Webber signings. Ronald Murray lol. Gave up on another bad pick (Delfino), probably a little too early considering all he got in return were 2nd rd. picks.
-Team lost in the ECF (LeBron).

2008-2009:
-The Walter Sharpe sleep-disorder draft. Deron Washington almost dead last. Both busts. No Hammond.
-Michael Curry hire. Hooray.
-Stupid moves, including Kwame signing. The awful Chauncey for Iverson deal that put the nail in the coffin. Traded Amir to Hammond for NOTHING.
-Team lost in the 1st rd.

2009-2010:
-The Daye draft. Summers, Budinger and Jerebko in the 2nd rd. Must have still been some good scouts here. Traded Budinger for nothing.
-Hires John Kuester.
-Signs Ben Gordon and Charlie-V.
-Trades Afflalo for nothing.
-Brings in Wilcox, brings back Ben, Chucky.
-**Inspired by LeBron. I think he gets it in his head that all we need to do is spread the court out with long shooters (Charlie, Daye, Ben.. Tay, Rip too, I guess) and Rodney Stuckey can be LeBron. Sheed is center. Defense and toughness no longer matters, or is forgotten.
-Do not make playoffs.

2010-2011:
-Greg Monroe, Terrico White. I don't give him much credit for Monroe. We wanted a center. He was the only center left. He wanted Cousins but couldn't figure out how to trade up.
-The seasons one and only move, signing T-Mac.
-Do not make playoffs.

2011-2012:
-Knight, Singler, Macklin. Singler was a solid pick (thanks, scouts!). Knight was a top-3 projected who slipped to us and wasn't that good. Bad pick. Not terrible pick, thus far. I give Joe-D no credit.
-Hello Lawrence Frank.
-No moves to improve. Buyout Rip. Give up 1st rd. to get rid of Ben--instead of using the amnesty clause, presumably to later use it on someone else, or not.
-Do not make playoffs.

He is a smart man. A smart basketball man. And as such a fresh ex-player, he had a tremendous knowledge of not only the players on his own roster, but around the league when he started his front-office career. Because of that knowledge, he was able to wonderfully identify flaws on his own team, and identify near perfect targets on other rosters to amend them. He had a great right-hand man in John Hammond--who was able to help him maneuver the salary cap, execute great deals, great under-the-radar signings, and make great late picks. He had a great coaching mentor in Chuck Daly who was able to help him identify at least one great coaching target. This culmination of circumstances resulted in the 2004 NBA Championship. Then came the problems. Joe-D never put in the requisite time scouting. If it wasn't someone he'd played with or against, he didn't know enough about them. Never did. Never would. Resulted in terrible high draft picks. And as his NBA contemporaries were replaced in the league by younger players, it became a death sentence. Joe-D also never developed the requisite basketball business sense. When John Hammond left, it was really all over. A lack of basketball business sense combined with a general lack of the talent in the game made it almost impossible for him to do good business with anyone. And without Chuck Daly around, he could never identify a good coach either. The ownership situation, of course, didn't help. In the three years that followed our championship, a single good deal or signing could have resulted in a second. But Joe-D seemed almost paralyzed in his fear of breaking up what he had built/what John Hammond had helped him build. When he finally got the guts to do so, it was too late, and his choice--Allen Iverson--was disastrous. He then fell in love with the notion of Rodney Stuckey becoming a LeBron-like force and built a new team around the unproven player (which also contributed to him moving Chauncey in the first place). He neglected defense and toughness with this new mold. Everything, essentially, had fallen apart. Then in a last ditch attempt to save his job this off-season, Josh Smith and Brandon Jennings. And here we are now. In complete NBA hell. And with his tenure up.

I could've structured that summary much differently to accurately reflect what happened here. But that about covers all the big bases.

I for one will try to remember the positives as we move forward. Joe Dumars was an incredibly bright player with a very shrewd right-hand man in John Hammond, and a great mentor a phone call away in Chuck Daly. He wasn't a great basketball executive. He wasn't Jack McCloskey. But he was what he was, and we had what we had, and you can never take an NBA Championship or its memories away.

-His first draft. Mateen Cleaves in the 1st rd. Brian Cardinal in the 2nd rd. I'm guessing the head man Joe-D had a lot more to do with that first pick (which sucked), and I'm guessing he let his assistant GM John Hammond and scouts have a lot more input on the second (which was good). ***From the start, Joe-D wasn't very good at scouting players he hadn't played with. But with later picks, where assistants had more input, he started off well.

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This was priceless. You make two assumptions, which are just guesses really as you said so yourself, and then from there you go on to make a conclusion that Joe isn't good at scouting players.

So, you're saying everything that went right, Joe had nothing to do with; he just happened to be sitting in the correct seat when stuff happened around him. And everything that went wrong is completely Joe's fault.

I think the real sports mystery here is that how we like to belittle past successes when they are followed by failures. When our team/player/executive fails at something, we go on a limb trying to prove that past successes were probably just flukes, or luck, or random acts of kindness by a divine entity who happens to be a Pistons fan. Why can't we criticize the current failures without flinging mud at the great things that were accomplished? This isn't just about Joe Dumars either. Many people still think that the 2004 team's success was just a fluke, induced by external factors.

Dumars did some great things when he started. He then tried to keep thinking out of the box. It didn't work. He did some great things. He did some stupid things. That makes him an average GM in the business. It does not make him the worst GM to ever walk the face of the earth. It certainly does not make him a great sports mystery.

Blue - those are horrible assumptions because we have zero data on who made those draft and signing decisions. You are starting with a premise and rewriting history to fit your premise.

I argue that Joe gets the credit for the good and the bad. I give him a little leeway because it appears that he was prevented from making trades during the time the franchise was for sale, and my conclusion is that Joe D did a great job assembling a championship team but that it is time for a change based on the past several years.

Like I said. That post was as much for putting together my own understanding of what happened as it was for anything else. I'm comfortable with the assumptions I made and the conclusions I drew. Your theories can be whatever you'd like them to be.

I think he never spent enough time scouting/didn't know about players he wasn't in the league with. I think he relied on Hammond for a lot of the business aspects. I think he relied on scouts for a lot of the later picks. I think he relied on Chuck for his first great coach hire. I think he fell in love with Rodney Stuckey. I think he got desperate and tried to save his job last off-season.

Trivia: the 2004 championship team had one all-star - an undrafted defensive specialist who averaged under 10pts a game. What did Joe trade to get that guy? Grant Hill. I'm not going to explain Grant Hill in his prime. But there is one thing I want to point out. To get something of value, you must give something of value. The GTW core spent 5 years as contenders. By the end, their value was significantly reduced. Why? They were expensive, had limited shelf-life, and other contenders had their core guys while lottery teams had no need for veterans.
Botching the #2 pick had serious reprocussions for the re-tool. The other issue was how much Joe paid for FA's. Rip Hamilton was key for the franchise but that contract extension was insane. Rip was a good player but he had no value to other teams because of his contract. Darko was just not a good player but Dumars was able to turn him into a #15 pick. By then the damage was done. Trying to turn existing players into anything useful became increasingly more difficult. At some point a person's potential is valued higher than another person's productivity.
At the same time the team is picking in the 20's. You COULD talk about all the guys Joe passed on but EVERYONE does that. Everyone misses. Still the odds are against you the later you pick. Which is an indicator of your success. So you have both decreasing value of your current resources and you have less chance of restocking talent through the draft. The organization loses its ability to deal.

As the franchise loses 'value' of its talent, there are other things going on. Defensive rule changes. Right after the changes, refs blew the whistle on everything. You couldn't keep your best guys on the floor if you were a defensive team. The stretch four was taking form as a league-wide concept as further rule changes allowed zones and hybrid defenses. Joe knows this and signs Gordon and CV. Perimeter scoring. The problem was we still had Rip. The other problem was we didn't have Billups.

People cry about not waiting for the next season to enter the bidding war but what are you going to come to the table with? You aren't going to get the key talent and you don't have the resources to sign and trade the next tier so you have to get that one unrestricted FA that you can outbid for. Look at the FA market in 2010. David Lee 6 years, $80mil. David Lee! Rudy Gay 5 years, $82. This is not even tier two stars. These guys are 'solid' starters. Ben Gordon signed for $55 mil ovr 5 years. This is a SOLID decision at the time and even projecting out to options in 2010. CV comes in as a stretch four when the referees are negating interior defense by whistling every time two burly guys rub up on each other. Five years later things have shaken out and a new defense has taken shape and referees have gotten used to what they need to allow and what they need to call.

Having Rip and Gordon on the same team is a recipe for disaster its a recipe that Dumars unfortunately keeps using. However, he is unable to address it because Davidson passes away and the team is in limbo. Bad decisions may not be attributed to the situation but I strongly believe this particular one was. He could not waive or buy out Rip because there was no leadership at the top to make a multi-million dollar decision. Gores or Davidson may or may not decide to eat millions of dollars to make internet fans happier but interim CEOs will probably not. Dumars runs basketball operations but decisions like this generally go higher.

I don't know if skimping on coaches was a factor of the ownership limbo but the team had 3 top coaches followed by 2 very questionable ones without experience. Bottom line is that those coaching hires were disastrous. Both for the eroding culture of the franchise and for the talent on the team.

Then you have the new CBA and its effect on the entire NBA. Besides the amnesty, the CBA put a premium on draft picks that have the potential for value. You have no place to go with your unwanted talent. Your best bet is in its expiring status but still its value is only what others will pay for it. Obviously, CV's expiring had no value.

People call Joe Dumars a moron but I don't see it that way. The team lost its assets and he could afford to make less and less mistakes. All those factors and the ownership change...its like a war on two fronts. However, he should have done better this off season.

Looking at the last 4 drafts, whether Joe got lucky or what, he's been a top 3 GM in the NBA. The Pope pick was probably wasted, but very few guys in this rookie class have been standouts. Like maybe 2 dudes.

Looking at the last 4 drafts, whether Joe got lucky or what, he's been a top 3 GM in the NBA. The Pope pick was probably wasted, but very few guys in this rookie class have been standouts. Like maybe 2 dudes.

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Larry Bird drafted Paul George and Kawai Leonard behind Monroe and Knight. Drummond was the biggest no-brainer since Trey Burke.